Category: Troubleshooting

On my last Slackware Linux installation attempt I faced a tricky situation. Everything went fine (with some exceptions at start) up until the time I had to install LILO. The symptom was that the installation simply hanged but otherwise the system was responding. The problem was in fact with LILO and my 3TB drive which was in /dev/sdb and was not the drive I was using for my root partition. This drive had a NTFS partition. If this is your case then do the following. Let Slackware finish the installation up until the part you need to install LILO. At this point exit the installation process (do not reboot!) and run

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mount/dev/sda1/mnt

mount-obind/dev/mnt/dev

mount-obind/proc/mnt/proc

mount-obind/sys/mnt/sys

chroot/mnt

I assume you are using /dev/sda1 as the partition you are installing Linux on, if not, then replace it with the appropriate one. Your root is now the same as if you had booted your new operating system. Now it is time to reconfigure LILO. For that open /etc/lilo.conf with your favorite console editor (vim, nano, etc). Add the following line to your lilo.conf file

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# /etc/lilo.conf

disk=/dev/sdb inaccessible

You can add each one of these lines for each drive you don’t want LILO to scan. For example, all drives which do not contain an operating system installed on them are good candidates to be flagged inaccessible. Now install lilo by running:

Recently, I’ve been playing Magic the Gathering after having last played it in 1998. I heard about this program called ‘cockatrice’ to test my decks, but couldn’t compile it on my Xubuntu 13.10 desktop. Finally I found out I could do it with the ‘clang’ compiler.

Here’s how to compile and install it:

Simply open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and copy a execute each command:

I work at a company where we still have an authenticated HTTP proxy in place. It’s very boring having to config every new program I install which doesn’t support the http_proxy, https_proxy environment variables by hand.

I was playing with my Android phone and there’s an application called ProxyDroid, which I use, that proxifies all installed apps transparently. I decided to replicate this on my Xubuntu platform, but it should work on every Ubuntu/Debian variant.

First, we need to install the required packages:

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sudo apt-getinstall iptables iptables-persistent redsocks

Now we will configure redsocks, which redirects connections to a set of defined proxies. I have only an HTTP/HTTPS proxy at work, so I edited the ‘/etc/redsocks.conf’ file with this info:

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base{

log_debug=off;

log_info=off;

log="syslog:daemon";

daemon=on;

user=redsocks;

group=redsocks;

redirector=iptables;

}

redsocks{

local_ip=127.0.0.1;

local_port=12345;

type=http-relay;

ip=ip.proxy.http;

port=3128;

login="pcaleiro";

password="pass";

}

redsocks{

local_ip=127.0.0.1;

local_port=12346;

type=http-connect;

ip=ip.proxy.https;

port=3128;

login="pcaleiro";

password="pass";

}

Do a ‘sudo service redsocks restart’ to reload the config file.
Now, we must configure the iptables rules to use our redsocks server.

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sudo iptables-tnat-NREDSOCKS

sudo iptables-tnat-AREDSOCKS-d172.27.0.0/16-jRETURN

sudo iptables-tnat-AREDSOCKS-d127.0.0.0/24-jRETURN

sudo iptables-tnat-AREDSOCKS-ptcp--dport80-jREDIRECT--to-ports12345

sudo iptables-tnat-AREDSOCKS-ptcp-jREDIRECT--to-ports12346

sudo iptables-tnat-AOUTPUT-ptcp-oeth0-jREDSOCKS

First we added a new chain called ‘REDSOCKS’ to the ‘nat’ table.
Next we used “-j RETURN” rules for the networks we don’t want to use a proxy.
We then told iptables to redirect all port 80 connections to the http-relay redsocks port and all other connections to the http-connect redsocks port.
Finally we tell iptables to use the ‘REDSOCKS’ chain for all outgoing connection in the network interface ‘eth0’.

This configuration is not persistent between boots. To do that we just use:

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sudo invoke-rc.diptables-persistent save

sudo update-rc.diptables-persistent defaults

And there you have it, your own ProxyDroid (albeit a little more silent :D). Don’t forget to disable your proxy configurations afterwards to “use no proxy” and delete your proxy environment variables.

I was trying to install Linux Slackware 14.1 on my PC, which has a P7P55 motherboard and Marvell PCIe SATA 6Gb/s controller. I had my SATA disks connected to the Marvell controller but the boot disk was not detecting them. The problem was that the module is not loaded by default due to some regression issues. In order to solve this you need to make sure the BIOS has the Marvell controller set to use AHCI. For that:

Reboot your PC and press DELETE in order to enter the BIOS management tool

Go to the Advanced tab and enter the Onboard Devices Configuration section.

Go down to the Marvell SATA Controller, press Enter and select AHCI mode.

Press F10 to save and quit.

Make sure you have your Installation CD/DVD or USB flash drive plugged in when the computer reboots.

When you boot your Installation disk do not press enter to boot the default kernel image. You now need to enable the ahci.marvell_enable kernel boot option. For Slackware simply type the following when the installation disk boot prompt pops up:

huge.s ahci.marvell_enable=1

That’s it! When linux finishes booting you now should see your disks under /dev/sdXyy. Continue installing your Linux system as usual.

Hello! Here it is, another tutorial for your Zopo C3 smartphone. This one is on increasing your internal memory storage size. The Zopo C3 has 16GB internal memory but only 1.4GB are used as internal phone storage for applications, so today we’ll increase that.

Next you’ll need to install a functioning recovery tool like Clockwork Mod (Tutorial).

Download this util called Meteos, which is an util in english (rare thing not to be in chinese :D) to be able to resize your storage easily. There’s another method which involves hex editing the Zopo ROM, but this one is easier.

Let’s start:

Install the Meteos app.

Boot your phone into recovery mode (Power button + Volume up, release only the power button when the logo appears).

Make a nandroid backup to your EXTERNAL storage SD card. This is important as your internal storage will be erased.

Run Meteos and choose your new internal storage size.

Reboot into recovery mode again and restore your backup

That’s it. Have fun installing everything available in the Play Store now. 😛

Hello again. I’ve recently received 2 Bitforce SC Jalapenos in my mail. One of them worked, the other didn’t. I tried every configuration, cable, etc… it just refused to work (if you have the same problem read to the end, my solution involves the fan).

I received a RMA ticket from Butterfly Labs but didn’t want to send it back, so I tried to repair it myself by flashing it (WARNING: this will void your warranty).

Well, it didn’t matter which image I chose it always failed with a “verification error” message, at different flash memory addresses. With that behaviour I arrived at the conclusion that the board must have a faulty power regulator so I

Disconnected the external power and used another jumper to connect the “pin 1” from the Pi to the “pin 4” on the Jalapeno JTAG. This gives the interface a 3.3V tension from the Pi.

I tried again to flash it with this new jumper connected (no external power) and the flashing worked!!! 🙂

I tried the new firmware and the cube now works. Even more, at 8GH/s it’s faster than the other one.

BUT, I had disconnected everything and was testing the board with just the cooler. As soon as I plugged the fan again (power it off when doing this) it didn’t work again. So now my conclusion is, either the power regulator or the fan is/are faulty.

I now have it out of the box in a cool spot and it works just fine, though very hot. 😉

No RMA needed! 😀 😀 😀

BFGMiner Jalapeno @8GH/s

UPDATE:

I actually closed the cube now and it’s working. I forgot to tell you: I was in a hurry one morning and connected the fan without powering down the unit. I actually blew a capacitor but it still works so far. 😀 So flash away and don’t RMA.

This one is on installing a recovery mod that you’ll need to backup your data before the last tutorial (increasing the phone’s internal storage)

The original ROM that comes with the phone already has a version of Clockworkmod installed but you can’t navigate it and it doesn’t work with “ROM Manager” (by the way, if you use this app to install the mod you’ll brick your phone ;)).

I recently acquired a chinese Zopo C3 smartphone. I’m very happy with it so far, but I’ve had to fiddle with it sometimes to fix things I didn’t like (the GPS not receiving any signal and increasing the internal memory size – I’ll publish tutorials for achieving this as well). Well, the first thing I’ve had to do was to root it. Here’s the easiest method I found.

First, activate USB debugging in the phone and connect it to your computer. It should install the “My HTC” driver automatically.